The latest Oculus Quest update will help to prevent accidental dog punching

“Watch out, kid. You’re in my guardian.” | Meta

Fresh off of Meta’s Connect 2021 keynote, where Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was announced for Quest 2, the company announced the latest set of software feature updates arriving on Quest and Quest 2 headsets starting today. The biggest addition is Space Sense, a feature that goes a step beyond the passthrough guardian by showing you in real-time when your safe VR space has been intruded.

It’s a practical update that aims to keep you safer, along with the other people and things in your home, too. Pets sometimes like to come over to you while a VR headset is on because it looks, to them, like you’re just standing or sitting there getting excited about something. The blog post over at Oculus’ site says that Space Sense can detect things...

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Fired #AppleToo organizer files labor charge against the company

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Janneke Parrish, a leader of the #AppleToo movement, has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the company, alleging the tech giant fired her in retaliation for organizing.

Parrish created the #AppleToo platform to help colleagues air their concerns with Apple’s culture of “pervasive sexism” and pay equity, according to the complaint. Then, in October, she was fired, allegedly for failing to comply with a workplace investigation into leaks.

Parrish says the company terminated her based on “false and pretextual reasons” — namely because she “spoke up regarding her personal experiences regarding workplace concerns and helped give voice to her co-workers’ concerns in a workplace where such issues have been systematically siloed,...

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The free laptop program built into the Biden reconciliation plan

Photo by EVAN VUCCI/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

After months of negotiations, President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda advanced into its last phase of debate this week. The bipartisan infrastructure contains billions to expand high-speed broadband across the country, aiming to close the digital divide over the next 10 years.

But the administration’s $65 billion down payment on broadband can only help connect families who can afford a computer. So Biden’s latest version of the Build Back Better program goes further, allocating new funds to bring federally funded desktops, laptops, and tablets to poor Americans.

Last week, the White House released its latest version of the Build Back Better plan, outlining a $1.75 trillion budget proposal to tackle climate change and invest in...

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Nintendo is reportedly making 20 percent fewer Switches due to the chip shortage

Photo by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge

The global chip shortage is rippling through all areas of technology, and its chokehold on electronics doesn’t seem to be easing up anytime soon. Nintendo is just one brand that continues to suffer due to the shortage, as a report from Nikkei Asia reveals that Nintendo is slashing the number of Switches it’s producing even further and falling short of original projections by 20 percent.

Nikkei Asia reports Nintendo will only push out 24 million units by the end of March

While Nintendo insists the chip shortage didn’t cause the Switch OLED to miss out on 4K video support, the squeeze could keep the company from meeting its updated projection. Nikkei Asia reports that instead of producing the 30 million Switches it initially planned on, ...

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Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is shutting down next year

Photo by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge

Niantic, the developers of the smash hit Pokémon Go, will be shutting down its Harry Potter-themed AR game _Harry Potter: Wizard’s Unite_on January 31st, 2022. The game will be pulled from the App Store, Google Play, and Galaxy Store on December 6th, and that same day, you will no longer be able to make in-game purchases, according to the game’s website. The game’s community forum and social media channels will be closed on January 31st as well.

In a blog post and FAQ, Niantic didn’t specify why it decided to shut down Harry Potter: Wizard’s Unite. But we weren’t impressed when we first tried it in 2019, and the game never reached the same level of popularity as Pokémon Go, which is still incredibly relevant despite being more than five...

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Facebook is shutting down its Face Recognition tagging program

Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge

Meta (formerly known as Facebook) is discontinuing Facebook’s Face Recognition feature following a lengthy privacy battle. Meta says the change will roll out in the coming weeks. As part of it, the company will stop using facial recognition algorithms to tag people in photographs and videos, and it will delete the facial recognition templates that it uses for identification.

Meta artificial intelligence VP Jerome Pesenti calls the change part of a “company-wide move to limit the use of facial recognition in our products.” The move follows a lawsuit that accused Facebook’s tagging tech of violating Illinois’ biometric privacy law, leading to a $650 million settlement in February. Facebook previously restricted facial recognition to an...

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Netflix Games starts global rollout on Android, with iOS ‘on the way’

Image: Netflix

We knew this was coming. Ever since the announcement Netflix was pursuing gaming content for its billion-dollar entertainment mega streaming platform, it was a matter of time before you could actually play games from the Netflix app. That day is here.

Let the Games Begin

Tomorrow, Netflix Games will start rolling out on the Netflix mobile app. First on Android, with iOS on the way.

It’s early days, but we’re excited to start bringing you exclusive games, with no ads, no additional fees and no in-app purchases. pic.twitter.com/ofNGF4b8At

— Netflix Geeked (@NetflixGeeked) November 2, 2021

Users will be able to choose from one of five games: Stranger Things: 1984, Stranger Things 3: The Game, Shooting Hoops, Card Blast, and_Teeter..._

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Go read this investigation on the toxic air crisis plaguing American communities

Illustration by Ana Kova

More than 1,000 communities in the United States are hotspots for toxic air pollution that can cause cancer, according to an extensive new analysis from ProPublica. Over a quarter-million people are living in places with a level of cancer risk higher than what the Environmental Protection Agency says is acceptable, and 74 million Americans have a higher level of risk than what the EPA says it “strives to protect” people from.

ProPublica used an EPA modeling tool to map how carcinogen-laced air spreads from chemical plants across the country. Most areas where people have the highest exposure to that air are in Southern states with weaker environmental regulations, and a quarter of the top 20 hotspots are in Texas. Predominantly Black...

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Dropbox is adding folders that will automatically organize for you

Image: Dropbox

Dropbox is adding a feature that will let you add automation to folders so new files are automatically renamed, grouped into subfolders, or more. The feature is called, perhaps unsurprisingly, Automated Folders, and Dropbox says it can help you (and any co-workers you share files with) stay organized with standardized names and tags.

The automation you add to folders can be configured with various rules, so you can tell the system to rename any files you add to the folder following a certain pattern or to sort them into subfolders based on the date the file was uploaded to Dropbox. The rules are currently predefined, but Dropbox says it’s working to make the system more customizable.

GIF: Dropbox

You can have...

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Inscryption is part card game, part horror, and all-consuming

Daniel Mullins Games

For my first session with Inscryption, knowing nothing about the game and only playing it on the recommendation of a trusted friend, I played for seven hours straight. It meant ignoring my adult responsibilities and most of my bodily functions to do it, but I learned early on that the choice between “eating lunch” and “playing more Inscryption” was a very easy one to make.

Inscryption is a collectible card game (or CCG) like Magic: The Gathering or Hearthstone while also combining elements of roguelikes and hidden object games that’s also an extremely unsettling horror experience. If none of those genres appeal to you, that’s okay. Inscryption blends its various elements together to form an experience so damn compelling that even if the...

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Microsoft is planning 3D metaverse apps for Xbox and gaming

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft just announced its Microsoft Teams metaverse for meetings and video calls, but the company also has plans for gaming and entertainment. Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says the software maker is “absolutely” focused on gaming for the metaverse with Xbox.

“You can absolutely expect us to do things in gaming,” says Nadella. “If you take Halo as a game, it is a metaverse. Minecraft is a metaverse, and so is Flight Sim. In some sense, they’re 2D today, and the question is can you now take that to a full 3D world, and we absolutely plan to do so.”

We’ve been waiting to see what Microsoft will do for Minecraft to transform it into a metaverse for VR and AR headsets for years. The company originally demonstrated...

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Nanoleaf’s Lines make it easy to color your walls with light

These modular light bars add some flexible futuristic fun to your smart home

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How to create a signature for PDF documents on a Mac

These days, hard copy paperwork is fast becoming the exception rather than the rule, and more and more official papers are being turned into PDF documents. (PDF stands for Portable Document Format; it is a standard created by Adobe in the early 1990s that allows paper documents to be turned into exact digital copies.) However, even digital documents have to be signed. You can do it the long way — print those documents out, sign them, and then scan them back into your computer — or you can create a digital signature and place it directly on the PDF.

If you’re using a Mac, the process is refreshingly easy — just use the built-in Preview app to create and save your digital signature. (If you’re using a Windows PC, unfortunately, it’s not...

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Razer’s latest productivity peripherals are focused on low noise and long battery life

The Pro Type Ultra and Pro Click Mini. | Image: Razer

Razer has updated its suite of productivity peripherals with the new Pro Click Mini wireless mouse, the Pro Type Ultra wireless keyboard, and the Pro Glide XXL mouse mat (also wireless). Among the new features of the peripherals are sound dampening foam in the keyboard, “silent mechanical” switches in the mouse, and improved battery life across both models.

As its name suggests, the Pro Click Mini is a more compact version of Razer’s existing Pro Click wireless mouse, so it’s easier to stash in a laptop bag. Despite being cheaper at $79 rather than $99, it benefits from having a similar dual-mode scroll wheel to the Basilisk V3, which lets you swap between a free-spinning scroll mode and more traditional tactile scrolling. It’s not...

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Microsoft opens up Excel to custom data types with images, arrays, and more

Image by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft Excel used to only allow two types of data: text and numbers. After overhauling Excel with its own live custom data types last year, Microsoft is opening up Excel to give developers the freedom to create their own custom data types that can contain images, arrays, and more.

A new JavaScript API will be available to preview inside Excel later this month, which will let developers create these custom data types for inputs and outputs and enable custom functions. Excel developers will be able to create their own add-ins or update existing ones to use the JavaScript API.

Image: Microsoft

Bloomberg is using Microsoft’s new JavaScript API in Excel.

This will open Excel up to far more custom data types,...

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Microsoft Teams enters the metaverse race with 3D avatars and immersive meetings

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is entering the race to build a metaverse inside Teams, just days after Facebook rebranded to Meta in a push to build virtual spaces for both consumers and businesses. Microsoft is bringing Mesh, a collaborative platform for virtual experiences, directly into Microsoft Teams next year. It’s part of a big effort to combine the company’s mixed reality and HoloLens work with meetings and video calls that anyone can participate in thanks to animated avatars.

With today’s announcement, Microsoft and Meta seem to be on a collision course to compete heavily in the metaverse, particularly for the future of work.

Image: Microsoft

Teams will soon have new 3D avatars.

Microsoft Mesh always felt like the future...

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Microsoft’s Edge browser is now available on Linux

Microsoft is launching the stable version of its Edge browser for Linux this week. While preview versions of Edge for Linux have been available for more than a year, the official launch will now see Edge supported fully on Linux with regular stable channel updates.

If you’re already running preview builds of Edge on Linux, you can get the latest stable version by running the sudo apt install microsoft-edge-stablecommand. If you’re new to Edge on Linux, then the installer is now available on Microsoft’s website.

Many Linux users will already be using Chrome or Firefox, but Edge is yet another browser option that might work on distros where Chrome isn’t fully supported. Microsoft has also added a number of privacy features to Edge to...

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Microsoft is giving businesses access to OpenAI’s powerful AI language model GPT-3

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

It’s the AI system once deemed too dangerous to release to the public by its creators. Now, Microsoft is making an upgraded version of the program, OpenAI’s autocomplete software GPT-3, available to business customers as part of its suite of Azure cloud tools.

GPT-3 is the best known example of a new generation of AI language models. These systems primarily work as autocomplete tools: feed them a snippet of text, whether an email or a poem, and the AI will do its best to continue what’s been written. Their ability to parse language, however, also allows them to take on other tasks like summarizing documents, analyzing the sentiment of text, and generating ideas for projects and stories — jobs with which Microsoft says its new Azure...

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Microsoft Loop is a new Office app for the hybrid work era

The biggest change to Microsoft’s Office documents in decades is expanding into Microsoft Loop, a hub for a new way of working in Office. Microsoft Loop is the new branding for Microsoft’s Fluid work, blocks of collaborative Office content that can live independently and be copied, pasted, and shared with others.

Much like Fluid, Microsoft Loop has three main elements: Loop components, Loop pages, and Loop workspaces. Loop components are live pieces of content that can exist across multiple apps, updated in real time and free for anyone to jump into. That could be a list shared in a Teams channel and also editable in a Loop page, or notes in a calendar entry that are also available to be pasted into Outlook and edited in real time within...

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SwiftKey now connects copy and paste across Android and Windows

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Microsoft SwiftKey is getting a handy new feature that syncs your clipboard across Android and Windows devices (via MSPoweruser). So if you use SwiftKey on your Android device, you’ll be able to paste any text you’ve copied on your Windows computer (and vice versa).

As MSPoweruser notes, the feature, called Cloud Clipboard, comes as a part of the most recent SwiftKey update, pushing the current version to 7.9.0.5. It was first available in the beta version of Microsoft SwiftKey in August, but now it’s officially rolled out to everyone.

The Cloud Clipboard will only save the last piece of text you’ve copied and will automatically delete the clip after one hour

SwiftKey has instructions on how to use the Cloud Clipboard on its support...

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The best early Black Friday deals you can get right now

The Verge

Black Friday officially starts on November 26th, however, we’re already starting to see significant discounts on some of this year’s most popular pieces of tech. Beginning in early October, some retailers — including Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart — have been lowering prices on goods ranging from Apple’s AirPods to LG’s C1 OLED as a part of their early Black Friday sales. The great news is these stores are now starting to drop prices even more aggressively as we approach the big day, and many of them have price-matching policies that guarantee you’ll get the lowest price. Below we’ve compiled some of the best early Black Friday deals available so far, along with some information about upcoming Black Friday sales so you can prepare...

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Morbius has ‘some form of bat radar’ in the first trailer in two years

For the first time in nearly two years, there’s a new trailer for the upcoming Spider-Man spinoff Morbius, which stars Jared Leto as Dr. Michael Morbius, an ailing scientist who inadvertently turns himself into a “pseudo-vampire” while searching for a cure for his rare medical condition.

Morbius is an unusual film, even by Sony’s Spider-Man universe standards. The character is what can best be described as a C-list Spider-Man villain, which _Morbius_is reimagining as a Venom-style antihero who wars between his doctoral duties as a healer and his newfound bloodlust.

The new trailer helps give a broad introduction to the character, including his origin story and his powers, which include the usual super-strength and speed, “some form of...

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How to find the best deals during Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2021

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest shopping days of the year, a relentless, deals-packed week when you can often find the best prices on tech products like laptops, 4K TVs, phones, video games, and more. And of course, these good deals are all accessible online. Some of them may, in fact, be online exclusives, though many should be available in-store, too.

You can always count on us to publish the best deals that you need to know about, but if you want to be among the first people to discover price drops on products you’re interested in, you’ll want to get set up with a price-tracking tool. We’ve included a few of our favorite examples below, pointing out how each can help you track deals in slightly different ways, each with...

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Know the price-matching policies for Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Nothing is more frustrating than buying a new computer, phone, game console, or backpack and finding out that you could have gotten it for a lot cheaper somewhere else. In order to keep customers happy — and prevent them from going elsewhere — many retailers offer price-matching policies where they promise to match a lower price that you’ve found elsewhere. They will also sometimes match themselves if you buy something that goes down in price a week later.

What follows are the price-matching policies for a variety of major retailers. There are a few things to make note of here. First, all price-matching policies have a number of rules attached to them. We’ve summarized some of the rules here, but you’d be advised to go to the links that...

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Black Friday deals: what time sales start at Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Black Friday officially kicks off on November 26th, but if you plan to make that the only day you buy gifts this holiday season, you’re missing out. Several retailers, including Best Buy and Target, are already getting a head start on rolling out their holiday discounts. Best Buy has even been offering price protection for Black Friday deals since mid-October.

Whether you take advantage of the slew of early Black Friday deals or hold off until the day after Thanksgiving, it’s important to know how every major retailer is handling the shopping event this year. Some retailers, for instance, are still approaching things a bit differently due to the ongoing pandemic, with many offering deals over the weeks leading up to Black Friday and...

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Know the holiday shipping and return policies for Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others

With the holiday season right around the corner, everyone is double-checking their lists and figuring out the best places to fulfill those orders. Thankfully, there are often a number of options when it comes to retailers that have what you want. Because of this, online retailers aren’t just dropping prices to compete with each other, but offering more generous shipping and return policies for their products.

Most people will still be doing the majority of their shopping online this year, which means that most retailers will be offering free shipping for anyone who spends a set dollar amount. However, this sudden surge in online shopping does increase the possibility for delays as online retailers become flooded with orders and their...

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The Verge’s Guide to Black Friday 2021

Black Friday usually begins the day after Thanksgiving in the US, but in 2021, that’s just when it’ll morph into its final form. The once-a-year deal extravaganza is already happening at a couple of retailers, including Best Buy, Target, and Walmart. Each has marked down a batch of tech products weeks ahead of schedule, and each retailer is frequently sharing more deals and details.

If you want to get your shopping started earlier than usual, you can and absolutely should. Most retailers that are offering early Black Friday deals also have good price-matching (or at least price protection) policies for many of them, so you likely won’t regret crossing off your checklist now instead of later this month. You’ll find all of the latest...

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Nest smart speakers and displays are up to 50 percent off this week

The Nest Audio is a well-reviewed option from Google, and even more worth considering now on discount. | Photo: Dan Seifert / The Verge

The world of smart home accessories grows each year, with the occasional new idea and the latest iterations on mainstay staples. This segment also heats up around the holiday shopping season and Black Friday as discounts become available, which is ideal because so many of them make great gifts. If you’re invested at all in Google’s Nest products — or you’re looking to dive in and test the waters — this week’s deals have a variety options you might want to strongly consider. Right now, there are significant discounts on Google Nest products at multiple retailers, including Best Buy, Wellbots, and more, encompassing smart speakers, video doorbells, home security, and smart displays.

First off, and leading our selection of Nest deals, is...

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Grab the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 for its lowest price ever at Best Buy

Photo by Monica Chin / The Verge

One of our favorite gaming laptops, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G15, is currently available for its lowest price ever at Best Buy. And this is the model to get, as it features an RTX 3070 graphics chip, 1TB of NVMe SSD storage, and 16GB of RAM. Topping it all off, the laptop is powered by an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS processor, and it has a 1440p display with a 165Hz refresh rate.

This deal knocks $300 off the regular price, dropping it down to just $1,550, which is actually the same price that Asus is asking for its lesser 14-inch G14 laptop that has an RTX 3060. Our reviewer Monica Chin was impressed by the G15’s ability to compress such impressive performance into a lightweight and portable package. If this wasn’t sweet enough, this laptop also...

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Firefox’s new mobile homescreen makes it easier to jump back to pages you’ve recently visited

Part of Firefox’s new mobile homescreen. | Image: Mozilla

Mozilla is updating the homescreen on its Firefox mobile apps to help you more easily jump back to pages you had viewed recently. With Firefox 94, which will be available Tuesday, you’ll be able to see things like your last open tab, recently-viewed bookmarks, and recent searches grouped by topic right on the mobile homescreen. You can get an idea of what it looks like in this image from Mozilla:

Image: Firefox

The new Firefox mobile homescreen.

Firefox 94 is also giving Android users the ability to tailor Pocket recommendations that show up on the homescreen by selecting different story topics they are interested in. According to a screenshot shared by Mozilla, topics include things like technology, health,...

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